"The decision to pursue a career in science and technology is made nominally in the eighth grade," said Bud Peterson, vice president for academics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The technical university tries to get young women before they opt out of important math and science classes. RPI runs a program called the Molecularium at Troy's Junior Museum. The experience is designed to help children as young as 5 understand materials such as solids, liquids and gases.

That's just one part of RPI's effort to bolster the declining national numbers of students pursuing technical degrees and change long-standing gender gaps in science and engineering.

RPI draws women through a number of tightly targeted efforts, from outreach to pre-teens to mentoring programs, ensuring women graduate.

School officials say it's working. RPI's class of 2007 will have a record number of women. Of the 1,371 freshmen starting next fall, 329, or nearly one-quarter, are women. It's much higher than the 18 percent average for engineering schools, said Teresa Duffy, dean of enrollment management at RPI.

The number at RPI has been growing. During the last decade, the number of women undergrads jumped by 45 percent at the school, said Theresa Bourgeois, an RPI spokeswoman. In 2003, 1,282 women undergraduates studied at RPI.

That jump mirrors efforts to tap into the nation's pool of women, who are needed to replace the country's aging science and engineering work force.

"This country needs engineers," said Betty Shanahan, executive director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers. "If you turn off 50 percent of the work force you've missed a big step in trying to address that shortage."

RPI has a number of programs to grab those students. The school runs the Women at Rensselaer Mentor Program, a group pairing older and younger women students. The school also stages an annual program called Design Your Future Day. Administrators bring high school juniors to RPI's Troy campus for a showcase of different career opportunities. Visiting students can spend the day with women pursuing technical degrees.

Officials credit such programs with helping to boost the percentage of women students and their graduation rate. The graduation rate of women has risen from 83 percent to around 90 percent over the last four years, Bourgeois said.

Increasing the number of women on campus is important for other reasons.

A large female population will improve the social climate of the long male-dominated school.

RPI has a long-standing connection with Russell Sage College, a women's liberal arts school in Troy. For a long time, the two schools even planned the same alumni weekend because there were so many couples with connections to both schools, said Duffy.

As an academic goal, larger numbers of women will create an environment similar to what students find outside the university.

"If our teams and projects don't represent the world that you are selling or marketing to or writing for, then we're only going to do part of the job," Duffy said.

Provost Bud Peterson remembers taking a group of visitors through an engineering class that was redesigning car interiors. One of the groups designed a spot on the back of the seat where a women could fit her purse.

That's one example of the importance of having diverse viewpoints, Peterson said.